Twelve-year-olds Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano meet at the Youth Scrabble Tournament where, although each has a different reason for attending and for needing to win, they realize that something more important is at stake than the grand prize

Henry James' travel writings on France and Italy are a case study in fine arts perception, understanding and interpretation. He treats each new locale as a new horizon to be engaged, absorbed, and internalized through a hermeneutic of analogical interiority. Roaming within the halls and chambers of French and Italian architecture opens, through the text, new conduits for an understanding of the vast interiority that exists within the self-examining-self. James is a master at relating the space of each location with the thoughts, instincts, relational perceptions and education of the observer

This volume collects three sea-going travel narratives by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., that span 25 years of maritime history, from the age of sail to the age of steam. Two Years Before the Mast (1840) is the classic account of his voyages around Cape Horn and time ashore in California in the decade before the Gold Rush. Written with an unprecedented realism that challenged the romanticism of previous maritime literature, Dana's narrative vividly portrays the daily routines and hardships of life at sea, the capriciousness and brutality of merchant ship captains and officers, and the beauty and danger of the southern oceans in winter

This book describes a group tour of "Europe and the Holy Land" Samuel Clemens experienced and reported about 100 years ago. He describes, in a way that only Mark Twain can, the people he meets and the places they go from the point of view from the American West. One memorable example of his American perspective is a comparison of Italian mountains, lakes and rivers with his beloved Rockies, Tahoe, and Mississippi. He also paints humorous portraits of the tour guides and his fellow travelers

During his wide travels John Dos Passos witnessed and wrote about many of the tumultuous events of the early 20th century. This volume collects the vibrant and insightful travel books and essays. Rosinante to the Road Again collects essays on Spanish life, literature, and art. Orient Express describes a journey in 1921 through Turkey, the Soviet Caucasus, Persia, and Iraq

In these three influential works, Washington Irving helped shape American conceptions of the western frontier. A Tour on the Prairies is Irving"s account of his month-long journey through what is now eastern Oklahoma. His descriptions of wild landscapes, rugged inhabitants, and dramatic chases and hunts display an eye for romantic sublimity and keen appreciation of the frontiersman"s "secret of personal freedom"

The Phantom Tollbooth is a remarkable story whose humor, irony, sense, and nonsense make it one of the most unusual and appealing books of the twentieth century

This is a delightful fable in the great tradition. The long-tailed field mouse who is the hero of the story, was involved - and this is true - in a programme of field research and while scientists observe him he observes man and the rest of nature. This enchanting book reads like a fairy tale, but the author has indeed built a bridge from fairyland to science, and there is profound meaning in this story which will be a delight to people of all ages who care about man and nature

This is James Clavell's tour-de-force; an epic saga of one Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, and his integration into the struggles and strife of feudal Japan. Both entertaining and incisive, Shōgun is a stunningly dramatic re-creation of a very different world